AT A PARTY last year, towards the tail end of summer when leases go up for renewal and people move jobs and cities, a close friend of mine found herself in an odd discussion. We were at a share house in inner Brisbane, a renovated Queenslander with glossy floors and a huge back deck, with a bunch of predominantly white, inner-city, private-school kids with good educations and job prospects. She was talking to a guy she’d known for years about youth crime and the justice sector, in which she works. They were talking about migrant crime (this was before the recent ‘African gangs’ scaremongering) when he interjected.

‘Oh, but you’d believe in multiculturalism, wouldn’t you,’ he said, almost accusingly. My friend was shocked. Believe in multiculturalism? In the empirical existence of it, as one believes in the existence of gravity? Or in the use of the term in reference to the goal of an ethnically plural society? He clarified by commending the ethnic homogeneity of Japan, where he had recently been on a ski trip.